Inside the Institute

De-Clutter Your E-Mail Inbox

Last week, I wrote about Spam  unsolicited messages  and how to keep it from overtaking your e-mail account. Subsequently, I learned a new term from Yahoo! Web Life Editor Heather Cabot: Bacn. Pronounced "bacon," it refers to e-mail messages that you signed up for, intentionally or not, but that you seldom open or read. Here, Heather's tips to stop bringing home the Bacn.

Take your name off the mailing list by clicking on the UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom of each offending e-mail. (But only do this with e-mails from legitimate senders, because it won't work with Spam.) Then, delete all the old messages in your Inbox; do a search or sort messages by sender to make quick work of this.

When you shop online, make sure that you decline offers to receive correspondence from the company. Some sites will sign you up for newsletters and the like by automatically putting checkmarks within the opt-in boxes  look that you've unchecked any offers you don't want to receive.

Change the settings on social networking sites, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, so that you only receive essential e-mail instead of constant updates.

In some cases, you may receive newsletters that you don't want to read right away but will eventually get to. Or, you might want to see those e-mail alerts when someone posts to your Facebook wall or tags you in a photo  but you just don't want those messages mixed up with more essential correspondence. My advice: Set up an e-mail filter (check the options or help menu for how), and have messages from those senders diverted into a separate folder.

Heather also runs her own health-and-wellness site on finding balance while raising kids. Check it out: thewellmom.com.

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